Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQE6P51WEW3RJ48DYNQCEP

Rory pushed through the heavy door of The Raven's Nest, the familiar creak of hinges and wash of amber light greeting her like an old embrace. The green neon sign buzzed overhead, casting its sickly glow across the rain-slicked pavement behind her. She shook droplets from her black hair and stepped into the warmth, breathing in the scent of aged wood and whiskey that had become home over the past months. The bar was quieter than usual for a Thursday evening, just a handful of regulars nursing their drinks in the dim corners beneath Silas's collection of maps and photographs. She spotted him behind the bar, polishing a glass with the methodical precision of a man who'd spent years cleaning weapons. His hazel eyes found hers across the room, and he nodded toward the stairs leading to her flat. "Long day delivering for Yu-Fei?" he asked as she approached, his voice carrying that familiar note of paternal concern that both comforted and irritated her. "The usual chaos." Rory slumped onto a barstool, her shoulders aching from hauling bags of takeaway across London's unforgiving streets. "Mrs. Chen in Bloomsbury tried to pay me in homemade biscuits again. I think she's lonely." Silas set down a whiskey without being asked, the amber liquid catching the low light. His silver signet ring clinked against the glass. "Loneliness makes people generous in strange ways." Before Rory could respond, a voice from behind her made her blood freeze. "Christ. Aurora Carter." She turned slowly, whiskey forgotten. The man standing three feet away bore traces of someone she'd once known, like a photograph left too long in sunlight. Same height, same angular frame, but everything else had been weathered down to something harder. His dark hair, once carefully styled, hung limp around a face that had learned too much about disappointment. The easy smile she remembered had been replaced by something that looked like it hurt to maintain. "Marcus." The name felt foreign on her tongue after three years of silence. "What are you doing here?" Marcus Holloway. Cardiff University. Pre-law seminars where they'd sit in the back row, passing notes about professors and weekend plans. The boy who'd helped her through contract law, who'd kissed her outside the library during finals week, who'd promised they'd figure out London together after graduation. The boy who'd stood her up the night before she fled to London. "Having a drink." He gestured toward the empty glass on the bar behind him, then seemed to notice Silas watching them with the quiet intensity of a man trained to read dangerous situations. "I work nearby now. IT consulting for a firm in Covent Garden." Rory tried to reconcile this information with the Marcus she'd known, the one who'd sworn he'd never touch a computer if he could help it, who'd wanted to practice environmental law and save the world one lawsuit at a time. "IT consulting." "Pays the bills." He moved closer, and she caught the scent of expensive cologne trying to mask something sharper underneath. "Mind if I sit?" She wanted to say yes, minded very much, but Silas was still watching and she'd learned to trust his instincts about people. If he wasn't moving to intervene, Marcus wasn't a threat. Just a ghost. "Sure." She gestured to the stool beside her. Marcus settled himself carefully, like a man whose body had betrayed him recently. Up close, she could see the fine lines around his eyes, the way his shirt collar hung loose despite being tailored. He'd lost weight. "You look good, Rory. London suits you." "Does it?" She touched her crescent-shaped scar absently, a nervous habit from childhood. "I'm delivering Chinese takeaway and living above a bar. Not exactly the legal career we talked about." "Better than what I'm doing." His laugh held no humor. "Remember how we used to plan? We'd get our degrees, move to London, find positions at respectable firms. You'd fight for tenants' rights, I'd battle corporate polluters. We'd change the world." Rory remembered. Late nights in the university library, sharing coffee and dreams that seemed achievable when spoken in whispers between dusty law books. Before Evan. Before everything fell apart. "What happened to environmental law?" Marcus stared into his empty glass. "What happened to law at all? Last I heard, you'd disappeared. Eva said you just packed up and left Cardiff overnight." "Eva." The name of her childhood friend carried its own weight of guilt. "Is she—" "Married. Two kids. Lives in Penarth now with some investment banker." Marcus's voice was carefully neutral. "She asks about you sometimes." The information hit like a physical blow. Eva, who'd begged her to come to London, who'd promised they'd face the city together. Another person she'd let down by simply existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Silas moved down the bar, ostensibly cleaning but staying within earshot. His presence was a reminder that she had people now, a different kind of family built from necessity and mutual protection. "You never called," Marcus continued. "Three years, Aurora. Not a word." "What would I have said?" The question came out sharper than she'd intended. "That I was running away from everything we'd built? That I couldn't handle the pressure of becoming who everyone expected me to be?" "You could have said goodbye." The simple words carried more weight than any accusation. Rory remembered that last night in Cardiff, the plans they'd made to meet at the Swan, the speech she'd rehearsed about needing space, about not being ready for the future they'd mapped out together. She'd sat in her car outside the pub for twenty minutes, watching him wait for her through the window, before driving back to her flat to pack. "I was a coward," she admitted. "I am a coward." "No." Marcus turned to face her fully, and she saw something desperate in his expression. "You were brave enough to leave. I stayed. Finished the degree, passed the bar, got a position at Jenkins & Associates. Environmental law, just like we planned." "But you're in IT now." "Because I discovered I was a terrible lawyer." His smile was bitter. "Turns out caring isn't enough. You need conviction, the ability to stand up in court and make people believe you. I could research, I could write briefs, but I couldn't fight. Not really." Rory thought about her own flight from the law, from expectations, from the life that had been laid out for her like clothes she'd never chosen to wear. "Maybe neither of us was meant for it." "Maybe." Marcus signaled Silas for another drink. "But at least you found something else. I see how you carry yourself now. Different than at university. Stronger." She almost laughed. Stronger. If only he knew about the mornings she couldn't get out of bed, the panic attacks in crowded Underground stations, the way she still flinched when men raised their voices. But perhaps that was its own kind of strength – surviving despite the cracks. Silas appeared with Marcus's refill and a subtle nod toward Rory. She understood. Time to decide whether this conversation continued or ended. "What are you really doing here, Marcus? This isn't exactly your kind of place." He looked around The Raven's Nest, taking in the weathered photographs and the regulars who minded their own business with the dedication of people who had secrets to keep. "I've been coming here for about a month. Ever since Jenny and I split up." "Jenny?" "Met her at the firm. Paralegal. We were together two years." He took a careful sip of his whiskey. "She said I was in love with a memory." The words hung in the smoky air between them. Rory felt the familiar urge to run, to retreat upstairs and leave this conversation unfinished like so many others in her life. But something in Marcus's expression stopped her – a recognition of shared damage, of dreams abandoned rather than lost. "Were you?" "Maybe." He met her eyes for the first time since sitting down. "Were you running from me or from yourself?" The question she'd avoided for three years. The one that kept her awake some nights, staring at the ceiling of her small flat while London hummed its indifferent lullaby below. "Both," she said finally. "I couldn't be who you needed me to be." "I never asked you to be anyone but yourself." "That was the problem." She finished her whiskey, feeling its burn chase away some of the evening's chill. "I didn't know who that was." Marcus nodded slowly, understanding passing between them like a shared language they'd almost forgotten how to speak. The weight of three years compressed into this moment – all the conversations they'd never had, the letters never written, the chances for closure that had withered from neglect. "Do you know now?" Rory glanced around The Raven's Nest, at Silas who'd given her shelter without questions, at the life she'd built from delivery routes and small kindnesses. It wasn't the life she'd planned, but it was hers. "I'm learning."